


Special Attention

by Deannie



Series: Women on the Border [2]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Community: hc_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 16:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7540210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Si, senor,” she said coldly as she rejected his help. “I am all right.” She tossed the pan down with a resounding clatter and pulled herself to her feet with the aid of the fallen shelves, stumbling slightly as they shifted. “I am fine.” She yanked off her apron and threw it at him. “I am <i>done</i> with this place and with <i>you</i> and your help. I quit. You may have this place and all the <i>imbéciles</i> that come into it!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Attention

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my Women on the Border series, a border bingo for the 7th round of hc-bingo. An answer to the prompt "Loss of job/income."
> 
> Thanks to Fara for her attention to this one! You're awesome!

“Hey, pretty one. You maybe give me a little attention?”

Inez sighed. The saloon was full, rowdy, and loud, as always. She could pretend she hadn’t heard the summons, but in the end, it wouldn’t do her any good.

“Senor,” she began archly, turning toward the voice. “If you want attention—”

She broke off, frozen. Sitting at the bar was a vaquero who might have been attractive to anyone else. His long hair was black and greasy, tied up at the nape of his neck. His eyes were arrogant, dark and haughty.

A flash of Don Paulo went through her mind and was gone.

“Of course I want attention, Senorita,” he purred. “A very special kind, if you understand?”

Inez shook off the momentary flush of fear. “Si entiendo, senor,” she replied archly. “But as I was saying, if you want  _ atención especial _ , you must pay for it,” she started to walk away. “From some other woman.”

He grabbed her arm and the touch nearly burned. “Oh, but I want to pay  _ you _ , hermosa.”

“I reckon maybe you didn’t understand the lady,” Buck said, appearing suddenly to grab the man’s arm hard enough that he instantly let Inez go. “She ain’t interested.”

The vaquero shook Buck off, but Buck remained solidly in his space. “What business is it of yours, gringo?” the man asked. Dios, he even  _ sounded _ like Don Paulo. “I was just talking with the beautiful woman. It is why she’s here, no?”

“No,” Buck replied, his voice cold and dangerous. “She’s here to run a bar, so if you ain’t interested in having a drink…” He poured the man’s whiskey on the floor beside him. “Then I reckon you should be leaving now.”

The vaquero nearly argued. He nearly picked a fight that Inez knew, from the stories she had heard since arriving here in Four Corners, that he had no chance to win. At the last moment, Ezra appeared on his other side. “Is there a problem here?” he asked breezily, though his green eyes, when they dwelled on Inez’s face, were concerned. “Buck? Inez?”

“No. sin problemas,” the vaquero growled. He took his hat and made his way toward the door. Inez saw both Vin and Josiah watch him leave.

“Inez, you okay?” Buck asked. Somehow, his concern served to light a fire. She was done being afraid of men like Don Paulo. She had escaped him when no one would lift a hand to stop him. She did not need these men to protect her from anyone.

“I am fine, Senor,” she told him, reining in her temper. “Gracias.”

Buck looked doubtful but moved on with a tip of his hat anyway. Ezra, of course, did not.

“Could I perhaps have a refill?” he inquired softly, placing his glass on the bar. As she turned to get the good scotch, he sighed. “I suppose even rude and ignorant vaqueros need a drink, do they not?” he asked. 

She poured his scotch without meeting his eyes. “Si,” she agreed shortly.

“So long as they do not do it here,” he said firmly. His caring tone caused her to look up. “Are you certain you’re all right?”

“Of course, Senor,” she said, her anger cooling slightly with the realization that these men were different.  _ They _ were not like Don Paulo, even if other men were. “It is the cost of doing business, no?”

Ezra sniffed. “Not if we have anything to say about it.”

Inez didn’t respond, though her anger started simmering again. Two cattle drives had come through the area in the last week, and this was the fifth man to make his drunken advances. It wasn’t the first time one or more of the Seven had stepped in to persuade an idiot to move on, either. She was tired of it all.

“Gracias, Ezra,” she said, striving for an unconcerned tone. “I can take care of things from here.”

“I am certain you can,” he replied, with a tip of his hat and that smile. “As always.” 

And then he was gone, and the night was busy, and since the vaquero did not return, she was finally able to put it from her mind by the time she closed the doors many hours later.

She was banking the fire in the kitchen so it would be ready for the cook she had come in to open the saloon in the mornings, when a rough, familiar hand grabbed her arm. “Hola hermosa,” the vaquero whispered, his voice gravelly and his breath pure alcohol. “No hay nadie que nos interrumpirá este tiempo, ¿verdad?”*

Inez tried to step back, reaching at the same time for the pan still hot on the stove. The iron burned her hand, but she barely felt it as she slammed the heavy weight into the side of his head. 

She expected to be released—few men could take a pan to the ear and remain in control of themselves—but instead, she found herself slammed hard into the cabinet across from the stove. Cans rained down, and she struggled to keep hold of the hot pan in the sudden downpour.

“Me gusta su pasión, pequeña,” **  he growled, his face burned and already bruising from her swing. The drunkard unwittingly helped her clear the debris in his haste to get to her. 

“Y me gusta mi privacidad,”***  she replied, slamming a foot into his face as soon as she had one free. He flew back into the stove to crack his skull against it with a resounding clang, then slumped to the floor in a heap.

Ezra burst into the room at just that moment—clad in shirt tails and breeches, his gun in his hand. He came up short at the sight of the vaquero estúpida passed out on a floor strewn with broken crocks and dented cans. 

“Inez, darling,” he cried. “Are you all right?” The disbelief on his face grew as he reached out to help her to her feet, as if he could not believe that she could dispatch that idiot by herself. And Inez, sore and fed up, snapped.

“Si, senor,” she said coldly as she rejected his help. “I am all right.” She tossed the pan down with a resounding clatter and pulled herself to her feet with the aid of the fallen shelves, stumbling slightly as they shifted. “I am fine.” Barely registering the pain in her palms as she yanked off her apron, she threw it at him. “I am  _ done _ with this place and with you and your  _ help. _ I quit. You may have this place and all the  _ imbéciles _ that come into it!”

She stalked past him, leaving him to clean up the mess if he wished, or leave it for all she cared. She walked toward the main room and of course, ran into Buck. Because he was always looking for the damsel in distress, wasn’t he?

“I heard a commotion as I was heading home. You all right, Inez?” 

“¡Madre de Dios, estoy bien!”****  she growled. Ezra entered the room behind her, but she ignored him and headed up to her room, slamming the door behind her.

It took her a few minutes to calm down. As she did, the pain in her hands increased, and she looked down at them, noticing for the first time the burns that spread across her palms and the insides of her fingers, much worse on her right hand than on her left. From the pan, of course.

She walked to her window and watched Buck and Ezra drag the vaquero across the street to the jail, but ducked off to the side when they looked up at her window, concern visible on their faces even in the uncertain light of dawn.

Men. She was not a helpless little girl. She had saved herself against Don Paulo and she would save herself here, as well. She listened to the doors of the saloon open and close and heard the men move through the building. For a moment, she worried that they were heading up here to,  _ again, _ make sure she was all right.

Instead, they began cleaning up the back room. The walls and floors of her room were very thin, and she could hear the shelves being righted and murmurs as the men directed each other in their tidying.

Perhaps she was simply tired from too many hard days. She rarely came to bed before dawn and the saloon was popular enough to keep her endlessly busy during the hours it was open, even with her morning cook, who allowed her a few hours sleep before the lunch time rush. She had been blessed, she knew, to be hired by Ezra that first day she’d come riding into town, hoping for a place she could call home after weeks on the run. Yes, it was hard, but...

She slid out of her room and walked silently down the stairs. She would apologize to Ezra and help them finish repairing the damage that moron had done. And then she would take back her apron and—

“... our saloon, Ezra. Women can be delicate, you know?” 

Buck’s words stopped her cold at the base of the stairs.

“I believe it was more the number of uncouth ruffians with whom she has had to deal since taking this job,” Ezra put in, mollifying her somewhat. “I fear I did not impress upon her the rough nature of the people who tend to visit our little burg.”

As if she was some delicate flower to be coddled. Inez didn’t bother to enter the back room and put them straight. Instead, she walked out the front of the saloon, careful to keep the doors from swinging too loudly.

She really was done with them. If they thought of the saloon as theirs, then they could have it. She walked to the telegraph office, taking a message slip from the box on the outside wall and a pencil, too. Her hand cramping from the burns on it, she filled in the address of Maude’s friend in Denver that she’d been given to use as a contact and wrote her message: I QUIT. ES IN CHARGE OF TAVERN. 

The message shoved through the slot in the door, she turned to go. The telegraph operator would send it when he came in and find her to pay for it later, as he always did when she sent telegrams before she sought her bed in the morning. The thought made her stumble slightly. She had had nothing when she came here, merely the horse she had bought in the first town she came to on this side of the border, where she’d sold the one she had stolen. This job had given her the money to begin to build something here. She would have to start paying for a room now, could no longer eat the food she cooked for her customers…

Inez quashed her fear ruthlessly. She had survived worse than this. She would stay and find a job with another business in town. Or she would leave. 

But she would not be afraid again.

She walked around the saloon to the outside stairs in back and climbed quietly to her room. Pausing at the top of the stairs, she listened carefully, hearing the murmurs of two voices still in the back room downstairs. How long could it take two people to clean up a room!?

Men. They could all go to Hell.

********

> _ “Inez!” _
> 
> _ Don Paulo’s call was as imperious and spoiled as ever. Resigned, she turned from the bucket she had in the well, facing him as he approached. _
> 
> _ “¿Si, Don Paulo?” she asked, trying to at least  _ sound _ submissive. It didn’t do to upset him. He was a childish idiot, but a childish idiot with a gun and a knife and the skill to use either. And he was the Don’s son, which made him more dangerous still. _
> 
> _ “It is time we spent some time together, no?” he asked, far, far too close to her. “Special time.” _
> 
> _ He was drunk. And perhaps she should have spoken to him differently, but even now, in memory and dream, she said what she said. _
> 
> _ “Don Paulo, you should find another woman. I am not interested and you only make a fool of yourself this way.” _
> 
> _ “A fool!” he growled low. “A fool?” _
> 
> _ He grabbed her hair and dragged her from the well, through the guests at his father’s party, and threw her to the ground in front of the fountain in the square. Exposed to everyone.  _
> 
> _ “I will show you who is the fool here, Inez!” He dropped down beside her, on top of her, taking her mouth obscenely with his. _
> 
> _ And Inez knew no one would help her. No one would dare. Don Paulo and his men were under his father’s protection. No one protected the people like her.  _
> 
> _ “You will learn, Inez,” he murmured in her ear, reaching for the front of her blouse as she struggled and squirmed, grabbing for anything in reach. “No one says no to me.” _
> 
> _ Her hand closed around something, and a bottle was suddenly in her hand, the jagged end the only thing between her and an evil she would never be clean of once it was done. _

 

A knock on the door jolted her from her nightmare and Inez sat straight up in bed, breathing hard and trying to see where she was now instead of where she had been then.

“Inez?”

Ezra’s call was tentative, as is he expected her to yell. She supposed he had reason for that, but right now, she was simply grateful to him for waking her from her nightmare. She had told no one here about her life, about why she left her village, why she ended up in Four Corners with nothing. 

“I expect you are still sleeping,” Ezra continued, in a voice that said he was fairly certain she was not. “I shall leave you to it.”

As he started to walk away from the door, she walked to it and threw it open, clad only in her nightgown, causing him to spin around to face her. He looked almost comical, dressed as properly as ever, but with a jar of something and a roll of cloth in his hand and a surprised look on his face.

She couldn’t help it. She giggled.

“Senorita,” he said, regaining his composure. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“You did,” she replied truthfully. “Thank you.”

He cocked his eyebrows at that. ‘You’re welcome, of course.”

It was interesting. He was as much a dandy, as proper and cultured and wealthy seeming as Don Paulo, but Ezra… She had seen his mother, had heard them talk. And she had seen him drop everything, in the middle of growing his own dream, to save a friend. He was nothing like Don Paulo.

“Your… visitor… from last night had some impressive burns on the side of his face, where it met your frying pan.” There was a certain amount of approval, even pride, in his voice. He offered the jar to her. “I do hope your own burns aren’t as impressive.”

She looked down at her hands, at the right one, particularly, which was throbbing from the act of turning the knob. The palms and fingers were blistered, bleeding in a couple of places.

“Oh, dear,” Ezra said softly. “Inez…”

“I didn’t notice last night,” she told him, feeling suddenly a little faint in the face of the damage. “I do not think I can bandage them on my own.”

His hand was suddenly on her elbow, and  _ his _ touch, she did not shy away from. He led her carefully to her bed and she sat, still staring dumbly at her hands. He pulled up the chair in front of her and held the backs of her hands with his. 

“May I?” he asked, gentle and gentlemanly.

She just nodded then watched, detached, as he went about rubbing the salve from the jar into the burns. The pain receded with the application, and she was able to watch him after a time; the way he concentrated on the work and took no advantage.

“I believe Buck might be revising his plans,” he murmured as he finished wrapping her right hand. 

“Regarding?” she asked, none of last night’s anger rising at the thought of the big man and his patronizing ways.

“Well, you  _ did _ just take down a cowboy with a frying pan,” he pointed out, a smile playing about his lips. “Gives a man pause about his latest conquest.”

Inez chuckled. 

“He means well,” Ezra continued, talking quietly and offhandedly, as if the subject had nothing to do with her. “Buck suffers from a lamentable lack of perspective when it comes to the fairer sex.”

“The  _ weaker _ sex,” Inez muttered, despite herself.

Ezra stopped his work for a moment and met her eyes candidly. “I am sure you understand, having met my mother, that I am entirely aware of how ridiculous that phrase is. Particularly as it regards you."

She nodded, warmed by his candid admission. He was a good man. They were  _ all _ good men, these  _ Magnificos. _ In the light of day, with the reminders of Don Paulo faded by the care of a man who wanted nothing from her but her wellbeing, she saw the truth. They would always help. They could not  _ help _ but help…

“There you are my dear,” he said quietly, tucking the end of the second bandage away. “I doubt you’ll be tending bar for a few days, but I’m sure—”

“ _ ¡Tu madre! _ ” she gasped.

“I beg your pardon?” he replied, too surprised to be properly offended.

She stood and began pacing. “Your mother!’ she repeated. “Oh, Dios Mio, I sent her a telegram!” She looked out the window. It must be past noon already. The telegraph would have gone through.

Taking a deep breath, she reached for her shawl, only to be stopped by the tiny smile on Ezra’s lips. “You don’t understand,” she told him earnestly. She hadn’t even considered, angry and tired as she was last night, what her message would mean for Ezra, given his relationship with his mother, but now... “I sent your mother a telegram saying that I quit and left the saloon in  _ your hands _ !” 

A small piece of paper was in his hand suddenly. “Do you mean this?” he asked, showing it to her without offering it up. “Mr. Jensen was certain there must be some misunderstanding, or perhaps that it was a prank.” That was a lie, and she could have kissed him for it. “He brought it to my attention this morning and I assured him I would discuss the matter with you when you awoke.” He shook his head. “Imagine,  _ me _ in charge of my mother’s property.”

She snatched the paper from his hand, her own smile bright and hopeful as she tore it to pieces and tossed them in the air.

Ezra grinned wide enough to show his gold tooth. “I shall consider the matter closed,” he said, rising. “A misunderstanding, just as Mr. Jensen thought.”

Impulsively, Inez leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “No more, Senor,” she promised. “I believe I am beginning to understand this town very well.” 

“I am very glad to hear that, Senorita Recillos,” he told her sincerely.

She looked down at herself and fought a blush. “I... should probably get dressed.”

He smiled. “I think you might get fewer untoward advances that way, certainly,” he agreed. “I shall leave you to it.”

“Ezra?” she called, as he was nearly out the door. He turned with polite interest. “I may be looking for a bartender—for a short while.”

“Oh really?” he asked, feigning interest. “How much does it pay?”

She smiled slyly. “I will have to let you know.”

“Just don’t let my mother know,” he told her, mock-serious, and closed the door behind him.

Inez turned to her wardrobe to prepare for the day. Her hands were stiff and sore, but her heart was lighter than it had been since before the horrible festival that had sent her running from her home, fleeing over the border into a whole new country. 

It was not as painful as she thought it would be to dress, and she brushed her hair and settled herself for another day. A different day. She stood at the top of the stairs a moment, watching most of the Seven sitting at their usual table, eating lunch and laughing at something someone had said. Good men to have around. All of them.

“Inez, darling!” Buck called, a little more cautiously than Inez would have thought he could manage. She descended the stairs slowly as he spoke. “You’re looking beautiful as always.”

“Thank you, senor Buck,” she offered graciously, heading toward the kitchen with a fair amount of apprehension. Heaven only knew what state they had left the place in.

“You better watch yourself, Buck,” she heard JD say, as she walked into the back room and found it neat and clean, as if last night never happened. "You might be the next guy she takes a frying pan to."

"Now, JD," Buck replied, predictably unconcerned. "She'd never do a thing like that to me."

No, she thought fondly, of course she wouldn't. Besides...

"Senor?" she called loudly, stalking back into the main room. "Where is my frying pan?"

******   
the end

**Author's Note:**

> * “Hello, beautiful. There’s no one to interrupt us this time, yes?”  
> ** “I like your passion, little one.”  
> *** “And I like my privacy!”  
> **** “Mother of God, I am FINE!”


End file.
